Jack Heidel's blog on fiscal responsibility

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Clinton Is Not As Bad As Trump

I’ve been saying for several months that I would endorse one of the two main presidential candidates before the election and that “Donald Trump Should Withdraw from the Presidential Race” because of his personal sleaziness and that, in any case, I could not vote for him.
But it is worse than this. As the Wall Street Journal stated recently, “Mr. Trump would start out with more than half of the country disliking him, and most of his advisors lack governmental experience. Too many blunders or an early recession (especially one caused by trade restrictions) could cause voters to sweep out the GOP Congress in 2018, setting up a return to an all-progressive government in 2020.” In other words the disaster of 2009-2010, when President Obama had a filibuster-proof Congress, could easily happen all over again.

Mrs. Clinton has said that she wants, ”higher taxes, more spending on entitlements, more subsidies and price controls in ObamaCare, more regulations on business, more limits on political speech, and more enforcement of liberal cultural values on schools and churches.” The likely result of such an agenda would be more lost years of slow economic growth. And “the costs of slow growth are corrosive. Flat incomes lead to more social tension and political enmity. The fight to divide a smaller pie would get uglier in a country that once was accustomed to rising possibilities.” This is a highly conceivable result of four years of a Clinton presidency.Conclusion. I am not exactly enthusiastic about Mrs. Clinton. But she is predictable and much less risky than Mr. Trump. As long as the House of Representatives remains under Republican control, which is very likely, Mrs. Clinton will have to negotiate with it to implement much of her agenda. This could conceivably lead to bipartisan progress on such major issues as tax reform and entitlement cost control.

I don’t see how Hillary’s desire to increase entitlement spending and the need for cost control could ever co exist. While I’m sure that it is true that Trump’s advisors do not have political experience they also would not have political baggage that would prevent them from implementing innovative or effective changes in tax policy and cost control.

Clinton’s platform is to increase entitlement spending. But the House Republicans will insist (I think) on entitlement cost control as the only viable way to shrink the debt. She will have to go along with this approach to get anything through Congress and I assume that she’s realistic enough to be willing to do this.

Clinton will work out okay if she’s willing to meet the Republican House halfway (as Obama was unwilling to do). This is the only way progress on basic issues such as economic growth and shrinking the debt will be made in the next four years. It is in her own best interest to be willing to do this because otherwise she’ll only be a one term president for sure.